1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information managing system and method for managing information such as image data and to an image pickup apparatus constituting the information managing system.
2. Related Background Art
An image pickup apparatus such as an electronic camera is known which records, reproduces and transmits a still image or a moving image by using a memory card having solid state memory elements as a recording medium.
An image browsing system is also known which transmits or uploads an image taken with an image pickup apparatus to a WWW (world wide web) server connected to a broad network such as the Internet by using a personal computer (PC) or the like to thereby publicize the image on the network.
By using such an image browsing system, a client can connect its PC to a WWW server via the Internet to browse images uploaded to the WWW server or download images.
In using such an image browsing system, after an image is taken with an image pickup apparatus, a memory card storing photographed images is inserted into a PC. By using an application of the PC, images to be publicized are selected to upload them to a WWW server. This operation to be performed by general users is very cumbersome and complicated.
There are other systems, for example, an image pickup system in which an image taken with an image pickup apparatus is directly transmitted to a WWW server. A compact image pickup apparatus designed for portable use has almost noting which is inferior to the PC in terms of ease to view and operate. In terms of ease of use of this system, it is therefore suitable to use a method of making an image transmission reservation in advance and transmitting all reserved image data in a batch manner at the reserved time. In this case, since there is no work of selecting photographed images at the time of image data transmission, a user's work is simple. However, since the photographed images are all transmitted, there arises a problem that it is not possible to confirm in advance whether the image data is allowed to be publicized.
In any of the systems, since the storage capacity of a WWW server for storing received image data is limited, a storage capacity capable of satisfying all user needs is substantially impossible if a plurality of users share the storage capacity of the WWW server. There arises a problem that each user is required to use a WWW server in some limited range of the storage capacity.